When a church holds firm. Or doesn’t.

1 Thessalonians 3.6-10.

The biggest worry for any apostle, for any ministry leader or missionary or evangelist, is their work might be for nothing.

That everybody they’ve worked with were only running high on emotion: They were excited about this new thing they were trying out, were feeding off the adrenalin and other people’s zeal, were feeling their own endorphins instead of the Holy Spirit… or were faking it because everybody else seemed to be so into it. That as soon as the apostle leaves, everything they built just collapses, because nothing else was holding things together.

Because this happens. Has happened before to a lot of apostles. No doubt happened to Paul, Silas, and Timothy.

Acts records the places Paul went, and the churches he either found there, or started there… or didn’t. It doesn’t mention the churches he started which flopped. Sometimes that’s because Luke simply didn’t have the data. But if failed churches weren’t a real thing, the apostles who 1 Thessalonians wouldn’t have this worry! If they had nothing but success everywhere, they’d presume the Holy Spirit would guarantee more of the same.

So they were worried about Thessaloniki, Macedon. They didn’t get a lot of time there before they were driven out of town. They were anxious to return, but none of ’em went back but Timothy. But when he came back, he had good news—as it comes out in the letter.

1 Thessalonians 3.6-10 KWL

6 Timothy came to us from you just now, bringing good news of you—

your faith and love, and that you always have good memories of us,

greatly desiring to see us, same as we you.

7 This is why we’re aided by you, fellow Christians,

in all our distress and and trouble; we’re aided by your faith.

8 So now we live, when you stand firm in our Master:

9 Why are we able to repay you by giving thanks to God for you,

for all the joy which we rejoice because of you before our God?

10 Night and day, begging God all the more to see you in person,

to restore whatever’s lacking in your faith.

Timothy reported the Thessalonians were still together, and were still fruitful in the way Christians ought to be. And they fondly remembered Paul and Silas, and wanted to see them too. And that empowered them.

The word in verse 7, παρεκλήθημεν/pareklíthimen, “we’re aided,” tends to be translated “we were comforted” (KJV, NASB) or “we were encouraged” (NIV) because its word-root is παράκλητος/paráklitos, “paraclete,” a word used to describe both Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and usually translated “comforter” or “advocate.” Jn 14.16 Properly it refers to a partner who comes alongside to assist us, and that’s what Jesus and the Spirit do—when we let ’em. The apostles aren’t expressing, “Aw, you’re praying for us too; that makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside.” It’s “You’re praying for us too; that helps!”

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Apostolic succession.

APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION æp.ə'stɑ.lɪk sək'sɛ.ʃən noun. The action, process, or sequence of inheriting a title and office in church leadership, founded by one of Christ Jesus’s first apostles.

Jesus sends his apostles on various missions, and in so doing, many times these apostles start ministries. Sometimes a church or denomination. Sometimes hospitals and hospices, schools and universities, shelters, charities, or whatever Jesus tells ’em to start.

Sometimes the apostle’s job is to only start this ministry, then move along to the next task; Paul of Tarsus obviously did that with churches and schools. But a lot of times it’s to run the ministry for the rest of their lives. Or until they reach a point where they can’t physically do it anymore, and have to retire. Does this mean the ministry is over? Occasionally yes; the apostle kinda was the ministry, and without that apostle it becomes a shell of itself. (Or worse, a mockery.) But if Jesus wants it to keep going, he’ll send other people to keep it going. Ideally he sends another apostle: Someone he instructs to pick up where the last apostle left off, maybe with a vision to take the ministry even further.

But Jesus doesn’t always have to do this. Because many an organization is built to keep running, even after its founders are gone. True of governments; true of businesses and schools; true of ministries. If its director steps down, one of the assistants—who’s often been doing the bulk of the director’s work anyway—can step in and keep things going, and hire people to do the assistant’s old jobs. Or the organization’s trustees hire a competent successor. Might be an outsider; might be the founder’s spouse or child. Regardless, this person succeeds the original leader, and the organization keeps right on ticking.

With anything Christian, of course people feel we have to have some veneer of spirituality attached to everything we do. It can’t just be us hiring a successor; it has to be God’s idea. Even if it wasn’t really. Even if the ministry was only supposed to last as long as the apostle did, and God’s ready to do something else… but the people on the apostle’s team don’t want things to end, and the next best thing to propping up the apostle’s corpse and tricking people into thinking she’s alive, is to prop up the ministry and do the very same thing. Why, God clearly wants it to continue! Look, the successor has the anointing!

Anyway. The way apostolic succession is meant to work, is where Jesus sends an apostle to start a ministry, then sends another apostle to succeed that first apostle. The apostle Apollos probably started the church of Ephesus; the apostle Paul found it, then spent two years training the new Christians; Ac 19.1-10 he left the apostle Timothy behind to lead this church for a few years; 1Ti 1.3-4 and after Timothy, the apostle John led it for a few years himself. If Jesus wants a ministry to keep going, he’s gonna personally appoint people to run it. He’s not gonna let the ministry’s internal machinery keep it going; he keeps it going.

And those churches which believe in apostolic succession, believe that’s kinda what happens. Not just anybody gets tapped to lead their ministries: Again, it’s gotta be God’s idea, and his appointed successor.

But we’ve seen plenty of cases where an incompetent, unqualified, corrupt, godless, foolish individual gets put in charge of one ministry or another. Something in the system broke down. And it certainly wasn’t Jesus.

There’s a certain amount of prestige to a ministry when it’s founded by a well-known apostle. Simon Peter, Francis of Assisi, John Knox, John Wesley… all these guys were definitely chosen by God, and people recognize the ministries and churches they founded are definitely part of God’s will. But for this reason, there’s a great deal of glory given their successors. If you’re the current pastor of a church founded by a great saint, surely there must be something special about you. (One would hope!)

So if you’re the president of a school founded by D.L. Moody, or the bishop of a church founded by Barnabas and Paul themselves, or the head of a denomination founded by Martin Luther, you must either be worthy of their greatness, or some of their greatness musta rubbed off on you. In churches who are really big on apostolic succession, they believe this in quite a literal way: Their first apostles blessed, laid hands on, and commissioned their successors to continue their work. In so doing, they passed down the charge Jesus originally gave them—in a long, unbroken chain to the present-day office-holders. Ergo Pope Francis has the very same commission Jesus gave Simon Peter to oversee the church of Rome. (And of course all the other churches connected with it.)

Read the whole thing! ➡️

What does Jesus send apostles to do?

When people investigate what an apostle is, mainly they wanna know whether Jesus still makes them, or whether they’re just a first-century, back-in-bible-times phenomenon. Especially when they don’t want there to be any more apostles, ’cause they don’t like the idea of Jesus designating leaders himself, with no input from them. (I already discussed this in my article on apostles.)

The rest of the time they’re usually looking for a job description. ’Cause some Christian has claimed, “This is what an apostle does,” and they wanna know whether that’s true. Do the scriptures tell us that’s what an apostle does? Or is this person all wet, and claiming some heretic weirdness instead of something truly biblical?

Here’s the thing: The bible doesn’t spell out an apostle’s job description. Because it’s not actually a particular job. It’s a person.

The word ἀπόστολος/apóstolos means “one whom [God] sent.” That’s a person. An individual. A woman or man to whom Jesus appears, or to whom the Holy Spirit speaks, and is given a mission to go and do. Which mission? It varies.

Yep, there’s not just one vocation, one mission, one job, for all apostles everywhere, to do. Like the military, there are hundreds of missions. The overall goal is to grow God’s kingdom, and the individual mission is gonna contribute to that. (Well, it’d better. Otherwise it may not actually be Jesus who sent this person. Just saying.)

So those Christians who claim, “Here’s what the apostolic office consists of”: Nope. This may be what they do, or their pastor or boss does—and it may be exactly what Jesus wants them and their pastor and boss to do. But is it what Jesus wants every apostle to do? Of course not. There is no single apostolic job description. There are just apostles: Individuals Jesus ἀποστέλλω/apostéllo, “sends out,” with a mission—and missions vary.

Evidence from the bible? No problem; there’s lots. Here, Jesus straight-up declares he sends people with a bunch of different vocations.

Matthew 23.34 KJV

Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city…

Yeah, I don’t like how they end up either. Them’s the risks when you follow Jesus. But set that aside a minute and notice Jesus lists three different types of vocations, whom he apostéllo/“sends out.” Prophets to share with people whatever God tells them; sages to share wise advice, help plan stuff, or judge fairly; and scholars who know their bible, can teach it to others, and can confirm the prophets and sages.

And no these aren’t the only people Jesus sends on missions. I’m not making a comprehensive list here. The bible doesn’t make one either.

Jesus designated the Twelve to apprentice with him, so he could train ’em to proclaim his gospel, cure the sick, and exorcise devils. I should point out that was their initial mission.

Mark 3.14-15 KJV

14 And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach, 15 and to have power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils…

Later he sent ’em to evangelize.

Luke 9.2 KJV

And he sent them to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick.

Much later, when the Twelve found themselves running Jesus’s relatively brand-new church of thousands of people, they decided their primary mission was to pray and teach.

Acts 6.2-4 KJV

2 Then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them, and said, It is not reason that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables. 3 Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. 4 But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word.

As our Lord, Jesus has every right to change our mission on us! ’Cause not every mission is open-ended, and we oughta expect to do it for the rest of our lives. Sometimes we actually complete our missions! The Holy Spirit sent Philip to go to a particular Ethiopian; Ac 8.29 Philip did it, shared the gospel with him, and was done. He wasn’t sent to Ethiopia to preach the gospel; the Ethiopian did that, and that’s why Ethiopia is to this day full of Christians. As for Philip, he went off to preach in other cities, Ac 8.40 and apparently stayed in Caesarea and raised his daughters to be prophets. Ac 21.8-9 Missions change—but apostles remain the people Jesus sends on missions. So like I said: Apostles are individuals. Not vocations.

Yeah, sometimes he sends us on big, grand projects. Sometimes he has us found a church, and run it the rest of our lives. And other times, he sends us to go get him dinner.

Luke 22.8 KJV

And he sent Peter and John, saying, Go and prepare us the passover, that we may eat.

If you’re under the delusion that an apostolic job is a big exalted thing with a mighty biblical mandate, and that apostles are huge important people, you may not be aware how leadership works in God’s kingdom. He once had to correct his apostles about that particular false idea:

Matthew 20.25-27 KJV

25 But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. 26 But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; 27 and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: 28 Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.

You wanna become an apostle? Then get it out of your head that it’s a big important office. It’s a person, who’s willing to obey and follow Jesus. Become such a person. Start following Jesus. Start serving others. He’ll give you a mission.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Apostles: Those whom Jesus sends out to do his work.

APOSTLE ə'pɑs.əl noun. Person commissioned by Christ Jesus to perform a leadership role.

[Apostolic æ.pə'stɑl.ɪk adjective, apostleship ə'pɑs.əl.ʃɪp noun]

Jesus didn’t just have the 12 students. The actual number fluctuated, as some joined the group, Mk 10.52 and others quit in frustration. Jn 6.66 Jesus had loads of student-followers. But he designated the Twelve in particular as ἀπόστολοι/apóstoli, “sent ones.” Lk 6.13 Eleven of ’em—including another student named Matthias whom they promoted apostle Ac 1.26 —became the core leaders of his newly-created church.

And apostle still designates anyone whom Jesus, or the Holy Spirit on Jesus’s behalf, sends forth to do his work.

Well… in some traditions. Y’see, various Christians insist the only apostles in human history are Jesus’s original 12 guys.

Well… okay, they concede Judas Iscariot turned traitor and died, Ac 1.16-20 and Matthias replaced him, so Judas is out and Matthias is in. And okay, Paul of Tarsus counts as aposstle, ’cause he calls himself that a few times; maybe Jesus wanted him to be the twelfth apostle instead of Matthias.

Well… maybe a few more first-century church leaders. Scripture does after all identify Barnabas as an apostle, Ac 14.14 and Jesus’s brother James, Ga 1.19 and Paul’s relatives Andronicus and Junia. Ro 16.7 And probably Jesus’s brother Jude, ’cause he did write a book of the bible. But otherwise that’s all.

Two reasons these Christians insist Jesus stopped commissioning apostles after the first century:

1. CESSATIONISM. They believe Jesus quit making apostles, and that the Spirit stopped making prophets. (Although evangelists, pastors, and teachers are still around.) The only reason Jesus designated apostles in the first place was to get his church started and the bible written. That done, the apostles died out, and are no more.
2. APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION: They believe the apostles were given a specific job; namely the supervision of specific churches and ministries. It’s the jobs, the offices which are meant to be passed down from person to person. It’s not so much that any one person is an apostle; it’s the mission, which continues till Jesus returns and ends or upgrades it. So the only real apostles are the people in these particular positions: The bishops, patriarchs, and popes who run certain branches of Jesus’s church. Jesus doesn’t need, and therefore doesn’t create, any more apostles than that.

Either way, these folks claim the apostolic age is over. I don’t agree with ’em, mainly ’cause that’s not how the bible describes the first apostles.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Hypocrisy in leadership: It can get really bad, really fast.

Most Christian leaders know better than to let hypocrisy grow among their leadership structure. It’s poison. It’s how scandals start, ruin churches, drive people to quit Jesus (or at least give ’em an excuse), and give all of Christianity a lousy reputation. So they take great care to keep hypocrites from ever being put in charge.

Others take no such care, and are full of hypocrites.

I used to single out particular churches, with particular leadership structures, for being particularly hypocritical. And yeah, it’s much easier for phonies to hide in churches with few to no accountability structures. (Or even with tremendous accountability structures, like the Roman Catholic Church… but the catch is their structure only offers forgiveness, not consequence, and that’s why so many evil leaders can get away with what they do.) It’s almost a given you’re gonna find hypocrites in anti-denominational churches: They want no oversight, no one to tell them to behave. But it’s hardly just the antidenominational folks. Any church can undermine or ignore all their safeguards.

So we gotta keep our eyes open! Watch for fruit. Mt 7.15-20 Good fruit and bad.

And it’s hardly just the leadership’s duty to watch out for hypocrisy. Every Christian needs to watch out for hypocrisy among our leaders. If they’re acting fake, take ’em aside privately, and call them on it! “You said such-and-so happened, but I know it actually didn’t,” or “You say you’ve never committed such a sin, but I know different,” or anything else which feels fraudulent. Yeah they’re gonna balk at the correction. Too many people think of accountability as judgment, and they don’t wanna be judged! But Christian leaders know (or should know) that judgment is part of the job. As is accountability.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

On 𝘯𝘰𝘵 giving to certain churches.

Recently the subject came up about funding one’s church… and about whether we oughta fund churches which really doesn’t need the money.

Fr’instance a megachurch. People assume bigger churches are successful, and flush with cash, so it doesn’t matter whether they give these churches any money: The churches already have money. The Roman Catholic Church is loaded with expensive buildings, priceless artwork, huge tracts of land; heck, Vatican City is a sovereign nation-state which prints money and postage stamps. Hence whenever a Catholic diocese actually does need money, most people’s first response is, “Oh come on; you guys have money.” And don’t give.

Now yes, churches with a lot of people are gonna need a lot of resources. More pastors, obviously. More support staff: More secretaries and assistants, janitors and groundskeepers, bookkeepers, security guards, IT and website personnel, counselors and life coaches, drivers and pilots… the organization can get pretty huge. Plus bigger buildings, more land, higher electric bills, and so forth. So they’re gonna need more donations.

Now when big churches have a surplus, what we should see is they fund more missionaries and community good works—like this one megachurch in my town. We see ’em legitimately, publicly contributing to the growth of God’s kingdom.

But what we tend to see, especially in prosperity-gospel churches, is better-paid pastors who drive better-model cars. Whose “outreaches” tend to consist of conferences and schools which charge for entry. Whose support staff consists of a lot of unpaid interns, or who make minimum wage with no benefits. Like this other megachurch in my town.

Everybody knows—pagans especially!—that Christians are supposed to reject materialism. That Jesus publicly made a point of rejecting materialism. So you’d think Christians, who know this too, would make a point of not sending our donations to materialistic churches.

But yeah, we’ve been conned into thinking and doing otherwise.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

How do we fund our churches?

Back in high school I invited a schoolmate to my church. After the service he confessed he was really bothered by the offering plates.

We passed offering plates right after the worship songs, but before the karaoke. (Many Christians call it “special music.” It’s where someone gets on stage and sings along to an instrumental track. Exactly like karaoke. ’Cause it’s karaoke.) People put cash and checks in the plates. Sometimes in little envelopes, so people can’t see how little they actually give. Sometimes not, so people can.

This bugged him. In the church where he was raised, they had an offering box in back of the auditorium. If people wanted to inconspicuolusly put money or gum wrappers into it, they could. The box, he felt, was way more appropriate than our ostentatious “Look what I gave” display—which reminded him much too much of this story:

Mark 12.41-44 NRSV

1 [Jesus] sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. 42 A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. 43 Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. 44 For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

That, and he didn’t like how we interrupted our services to beg for money. People should just give, he figured.

Me, I grew up hearing you funded your church by tithing: Ten percent of every paycheck belongs to Jesus, so give it to your church. Ten percent of the gross, not the net; and if you don’t cough up the dough you’ll be cursed. No, an usher wouldn’t shout, “Tithe, motherf---er!” although that’d be awesome; I didn’t say cursed at. It meant we expected this bit of Malachi to come true:

Malachi 3.8-9 NRSV

8 Will anyone rob God? Yet you are robbing me! But you say, “How are we robbing you?” In your tithes and offerings! 9 You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me—the whole nation of you!

Our finances were gonna shrivel. We’d been told scary stories about people who stopped tithing, and suddenly they could no longer live within their means. Apparently if God doesn’t get his cut, he takes it out of us in other ways. Ways we won’t like. You know, like wiseguys who stage a few “accidents” till they get paid off.

Now no, I’m not accusing our pastors of trying to shake us down. They preached this because it’s what they were taught. They were told this is a biblical principle, and shown all the appropriate proof texts in Malachi and Matthew. They never bothered to investigate beyond these verses, and see whether the bible teaches more about the subject—and it does. I wrote about it.

When I investigated, I also discovered tithing—as a means of financing Christian churches—is actually a recent doctrine.

It first appeared in the United States a very short time after the year 1776. That bit of information give you any hint as to why churches suddenly began to preach about tithing?

Right you are: Because between the Edict of Milan in the year 313, and the American Revolution in 1776, churches were almost entirely funded by the state. Senates and kings paid for everything. Really, your tax dollars did. (Well, considering the United States used to be British, your tax pounds did.) They felt it was the state’s duty to do so; that if you’re truly a Christian nation, the nation sponsors the church. Right?

But then the United States quit being British. Our states all rewrote their constitutions. In them, nearly all of them included freedom of religion: The state has no official church, so citizens aren’t compelled to state any particular Christian creed… nor fund any particular Christian church.

Churches hated the idea, because now it meant they had to fund themselves. And now they do: By telling their regulars we need to tithe.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Bishops: The head leaders in a church.

BISHOP 'bɪʃ.əp noun. A senior member of the Christian clergy. Usually in charge of multiple churches, like a district or diocese; usually empowered to appoint other clergy.

2. A chess piece. Each player gets two, and they only move diagonally; one on white squares, and one on black.

[Episcopal ə'pɪs.kə.pəl adjective.]

When Paul wrote to Timothy and Titus about church leaders, one particular word he used was ἐπίσκοπον/epískopon, “supervisor.” The King James Version translates this word as “overseer” Ac 20.28 KJV and “bishop.” 1Pe 2.25 KJV We actually got the latter word “bishop” from epískopon; you just have to drop the -on ending and swap the epí- for bi-, and soften the k sound. Language evolves like that.

Every church has supervisors of one form or another. But not all of ’em use the word “bishop” for them; not all of ’em are comfortable with that word, ’cause they think of it as a Catholic thing. So they use other words, like “pastor” or “minister” or “overseer” or “superintendent” or “president.” Varies from church to church.

Now, some of the reason people don’t wanna use “bishop” to translate epískopon is because of what “bishop” means nowadays: A person who supervises multiple churches, or multiple campuses of a really big church. (Although some pastors just want a more important-sounding title, so they use “bishop” regardless. Watch out for those guys. But back to my point.) They figure Paul was writing about the head leader in one particular church, so to their minds epíksopon means “pastor,” and that’s how they interpret it.

And they’re right. It is equivalent to what we mean by “pastor”—the person who supervises and shepherds a flock of Christians. Like Jesus. 1Pe 2.25 But you gotta remember in the first century, churches met in homes, and frequently and necessarily multiple homes. The person supervising one group, quickly found himself supervising multiple groups. Multiple campuses of the same church. Like bishops do nowadays. And over time, when churches moved into church buildings, bishops would be in charge of the church for the whole city, but they weren’t able to be in multiple places at once to run the services. So each individual service had a presbyter (who became what we now call “priests”) run things. Again, kinda like multi-campus churches today.

But we don’t have to call the head leader a bishop. Doesn’t matter what you call them: Pastor (senior pastor, head pastor, lead pastor, teaching pastor, pastor emeritus), priest, vicar, minister, reverend, apostle, prophet, chairman, president, senior elder, chief deacon. Wherever the buck stops, that’s who Paul meant. That’s your bishop.

For the sake of churches which get nervous about that title, I’ll just say “supervisor” from here on out.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Presbyters: The grownups who run a church.

PRESBYTER 'prɛz.bə.dər, 'prɛs.bə.dər noun. An elder in a Christian church.

2. The formal title of a minister or priest, in certain Christian denominations.

[Presbyteral prɛz'bə.dər.əl adjective, presbyterial prɛz.bə'tɪ.ri.əl adjective, presbyterian prɛz.bə'tɪ.ri.ən adjective.]

You likely know the word presbyterian because there are presbyterian churches, and a few presbyterian denominations. The word’s in their names. Y’might not know what it means: It indicates these particular churches aren’t run by the head pastor, nor run from afar by a bishop, nor are they a democracy where all the members get a vote. They’re run by a limited number of qualified mature Christians. They’re run by elders.

The New Testament word which we translate “elder” is πρεσβύτερος/presvýteros, and in the Latin bible this became presbyter. So yeah, it’s a Latin word. Still means “elder.”

The ancient church was run by elders for a few centuries, but it gradually evolved into something more hierarchical: Presbyters became the priests who run the church services; bishops were the supervisors who oversaw all the churches in town; archbishops oversaw all the bishops in the province; patriarchs oversaw all the bishops in the country. Western churches got it into their heads their patriarch oversaw all the bishops in the world, including other patriarchs… and that’s one of the ways the Roman Catholic Church grew distant and distinct from the Orthodox Church, causing the universal church to officially split in 1054. But both those churches still think of presbyter and priest as the same thing—and an elder as something entirely different.

After the Protestant movement began, churches still largely ran the same way, with archbishops and bishops and priests. But once the Church of Scotland went Protestant, they started to rethink the whole church leadership idea. Top-down leadership wasn’t working for them… and not everybody in the church was spiritually mature enough to responsibly vote for things. So who should lead? Their solution, which they’re pretty sure comes from bible: Elders.

Titus 1.5-9 ESV

5 This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you— 6 if anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife, and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination. 7 For an overseer, as God’s steward, must be above reproach. He must not be arrogant or quick-tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain, 8 but hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined. 9 He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.

True, lots of Christians like to make a distinction between elder and overseer (Greek ἐπίσκοπον/epískopon, “supervisor”; KJV “bishop”) as two different titles and offices in a church. But the way Paul of Tarsus phrased it to Titus of Crete, he treated the terms as interchangeable. Elders supervise. (And there’s still a little bit of hierarchy: Titus was to appoint these elders, and supervise them. Whether you’re fine with hierarchical churches or not, every Christian answers to every other Christian, y’know.)

How presbyterian churches oughta work, is presbyters get selected from the congregation: Somebody in leadership recognizes you’re mature enough to be included in the leadership, and invites you to join in. And now you’re contributing to how the church is run. You have a say. Your voice gets heard. And the presbyters actually do run stuff.

Yeah, the church has a head pastor, because somebody needs to be the executive around there, but the pastor doesn’t run everything; the presbyters do. The pastor doesn’t do all the work—and no church’s pastor should do all the work!—but presbyters do. And the pastor doesn’t decide everything, like the church’s mission statement or policies or goals or faith statement: Presbyters do.

How presbyterian churches actually do work, varies.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

The church café.

Some churches offer refreshments before, after, or even during the service. My current church did, before the current pandemic made us suspend it. At one of my previous churches, one of our pastors’ wives who loved to cook (who became known as our “minister of munchies”) would have so much food available, you may as well skip breakfast at home, ’cause there was plenty of food at church.

But many churches—namely the churches which get so big, refreshment tables get cleaned out within minutes—have decided to go with cafés. They stick it somewhere near the front of the building, and sell coffee and doughnuts—and other drinks, and other foods.

A friend likes to sarcastically call them “concession stands.” To him, the church café is just a money-making scheme… kinda like the moneychangers Jesus had to throw out of temple ’cause they turned it into a marketplace. Mk 13.13-17 In some churches, that’s precisely what their cafés feel like.

But the purpose of this article isn’t to bash church cafés. It’s to remind us of the point of providing food and drink for the people of our churches: Fellowship. Food and drink mean fellowship, and fellowship grows God’s kingdom. In many cases it grows it a lot better than sermons and worship music. You know the saying the fastest way to a person’s heart is through their stomach? Works in church too.

Growing God’s kingdom… or not.

The first Christians used to eat together. It was part of their worship services: Read some bible, talk about what Jesus taught, pray, anoint the sick, have holy communion, and have lunch. Yeah, they were largely hanging out together for a few hours, with some formal parts of the service, and a lot of informal, interactive parts. When we moved out of the homes and into church buildings, we lost a lot of the informality. Particularly the meals.

And the reason churches put out refreshments is to give people a reason to stick around before and after the service… and interact. We gotta wait in line for the coffee urn, and make small talk about weather. We gotta take turns with the toaster, and make small talk about baseball. We gotta semi-sincerely tell one another, “No you take the last strudel… well here, we’ll cut it in half.” And so forth. We gotta talk. And at some part we might actually run out of small talk and get into deep talk.

Whereas with a church with no refreshments? Oh, they bolt for their cars right away. As soon as my current church stopped serving refreshments, people cleared out of the services almost as soon as they were over. Really easy to get ’em out of the building. We have a reputation as a friendly church… and once you take away the refreshments it is so easy to dissolve that reputation.

So do I recommend the practice? Heck yeah.

Doesn’t have to be anything special. Just please, for the love of God, don’t buy Folgers. I know it’s the cheapest coffee there is (unless you have a Costco membership; then it’s usually Kirkland) and there’s a reason for that: It’s not good. It’s what people who don’t drink coffee buy when they gotta buy coffee. Don’t do that to your people. Find out who all the coffee snobs are in your church, and get them to take care of it. They’ll do you proud.

Likewise with the food: Doesn’t have to be anything special either. Discount doughnuts, day-old specials, Little Debbie snack cakes, homemade coffee cake (if anybody likes to bake), finger sandwiches, deviled eggs, a big jar of Tootsie Rolls, whatever. Bring anything. Something is better than nothing, and somebody’s gonna appreciate it.

What if people spill coffee in the auditorium, or otherwise make a mess? Clean it up. If it doesn’t clean out, you’ve either got ineffective cleaning supplies, or inferior carpeting and upholstery. I drink coffee all the time; I’ve spilled a bunch; it only ruins paper. Everything else, it cleans right out of. (Yes, even laptops.)

What if homeless people start showing up to get at the free food? GOOD. Share Jesus with ’em as well as the food. See if you can help in any other ways, while you’re at it. Maybe you can; maybe they don’t want any help; either way, be good news to them.

Switching to a café, and how not to do it.

Now like I said, if your church has a lot of people, you’re gonna run out of food and coffee quickly. So you gotta put some brakes on them, and that’s where money comes in: People aren’t gonna casually swipe all the doughnuts and drink all the coffee when they gotta pay for it.

Churches don’t always realize this is when or why they oughta charge for food. More often they start charging because some church leader says, “What’re we paying for coffee and doughnuts every month?… That much? Why don’t we charge people for them then?” They wanna pinch pennies, or they wanna raise money. So they put up price tags… and in so doing, kill the ministry.

I visited a friend’s church a few years ago. They had a café. They charged $2 for black coffee (same as most places), $4 for mochas and lattés and other coffee drinks; $3 and up for pastries. Roughly the same prices as any other coffeehouse. Because that’s what they were mimicking: Other coffeehouses. Hey, if Starbucks can charge you $4 for a latté, why can’t they?

And I remind you: The point is fellowship. How many people are gonna buy church café lattés? How many are gonna buy church café pastries? (Especially once they ask themselves, “Wait… is that Kirkland coffee? Are those Kirkland pastries? Why am I spending full coffeehouse prices on Coscto food?”) Are the poorer members of your church even able to fellowship at your café? If not, you’re doing it wrong.

A few decades ago my church’s café shut down: It made so little money, and the volunteers didn’t last long, so the church let it go dormant. Then it handed the café over to the Christian elementary school which shared the building—where I was a teacher—so we could use it for fundraisers. We ran a fundraiser or two, but once the fundraisers were over, the café went back to being empty.

Then one summer I was put in charge of it for the school’s summer day camp.

Theologian that I am, I needed to know the purpose of a church café before I ran one. So of course I came to all the conclusions I articulated above: It’s about fellowship.

Not profits. Yeah, ideally you should cover expenses… but there’s no rent, barely any utility costs, you got an all-volunteer staff, so if you sell everything at slightly more than what you paid for it, the prices are gonna be ridiculously low. And they were. I slashed all the café’s prices to a dollar or less. Coffee was now 25 cents. Espresso drinks were $1. Bottled water was also 25 cents. Doughnuts were still a bit expensive, but at 50 cents they sold out fast… and we still had plenty of other, healthier alternatives.

When people discovered bottled water was 25 cents instead the $1.50 they expected, they’d buy multiple bottles. Same with a lot of the other items. And if our 25-cent coffee was Folgers, they wouldn’t care or complain; they’d just be thrilled there was someplace on earth 25-cent coffee still exists.

My principal was worried the café couldn’t possibly make any money with those prices. We did volume business: We made way more money than before. So much so, the church took it back over the next year. (And didn’t learn from my example, hiked the prices back up, and did just as poorly as before.)

During that time, there was a crowd round the café every Sunday. Not just in line: Seated at the tables, eating together, drinking with one another, interacting. Fellowshipping. Talking about the service, talking about life, talking about what God’s done in those lives—being the body of Christ together.

Goal achieved.

Unexamined priorites.

To a point Starbucks tries to encourage fellowship too. Their vision is more secular: They want their coffeehouses to be a “third place,” other than home and work, where people gather and share life together… and while they’re at it, buy Starbucks products. They get the point. Churches don’t. And of all people, should.

Instead, too many of us think of the church café as a side business. Something that’ll raise a little money for the church, to make up for the fact our members aren’t putting enough in the offering. Or because they covet the business coffeehouses get: “Why can’t they hang out at church the way they hang out at coffeehouses?” So they try to duplicate the coffeehouse experience. Poorly.

More often, it’s just because the leadership thinks it’d be really cool to have a coffeehouse in the building. Saves ’em the trouble of going elsewhere for their caffeine fix. So their motive is convenience. Not fellowship, not profit. Hence it encourages little fellowship… and isn’t all that profitable either.

How does a church café grow God’s kingdom? That, and that alone, should be the only thought in mind when churches decided to create a café. How does it help Jesus? Or does it?—’cause in some churches they really don’t. They’re simply a dividing wall between the wealthy, who can afford it; and the poor, who can’t, and feel pushed outside because of it. Would Jesus encourage it as another means of spreading the good news, or would he get the whip out and overturn its tables?

Read the whole thing! ➡️

When Christians won’t even let you think.

Some Christians get awfully dogmatic.

Dogma is another word for doctrine, Christianity’s fixed ideas or official beliefs. It’s an old-timey word, so you tend to only hear dogma in older churches, or used to refer to that one movie about fallen angels who try to take advantage of a dogmatic loophole. But while the adjective doctrinal tends to mean “deals with doctrine,” dogmatic tends to mean “demands we follow doctrine.” Dogmatists are the doctrine police of Christendom.

And while the older churches have a settled, limited, fixed number of dogmas… certain Christians kinda crank out a new doctrine every week.

Fr’instance this one Texas pastor I know; I’ll call him Alfons. He has a newsletter called “These Doctrines,” in which Alfons goes over all the things he expects the Christians of his church—and really, Christians everywhere—to believe. For the most part they’re typical Fundamentalist principles: God’s a trinity, Jesus is both God and human, Mary was a virgin when she gave birth to him, the bible’s infallible. But Alfons mixes in a lot of other beliefs he considers settled and fixed and non-negotiable. Divorce, in almost all circumstances, is sin. Alcohol is sin. Women who aren’t subservient to men is sin. Hip hop is devilish. The pope’s an antichrist. And so on.

Speaking of the pope: Like a lot of Fundies, Alfons loves to mock Roman Catholics for believing the pope to be infallible. (Which they do only under certain circumstances. But Fundies don’t always know this… nor care.) Yet Alfons claims papal-level infallibility in every sermon and newsletter: He’s right, these are doctrines, and don’t you dare challenge him or you’ll find yourself fighting the God who anointed him pastor. It’s not so much about the pope being wrong, and more about professional jealousy. But I digress.

What’s the difference between Alfons’s church and a cult? Enforcement. How gracious is the leadership of a church when you respectfully disagree with them? (Emphasis on respectfully. If you disagree with them, don’t be a dick.)

• If they figure okay, you don’t agree; they’ll be patient and over time, win you over: Not a cult.
• If they figure it’s not okay, and you have to leave before your heretic stank gets on ’em, and they banish you to hell: Totally a cult. Just be glad they let you go, and don’t drag you to the basement to reprogram you. (’Cause some cults will. I’m not kidding.)
• Letting you attend their services, but debating you every chance they can: That’d be proselytism. It’s not cultish… but it’s not fruitful either. Argumentativeness isn’t of God, and a Christian who thinks they can win you over by wearing you down, still has some maturing to do.
• Letting you attend, but your beliefs disqualify you from membership and leadership: Not a cult. It only makes sense for churches to have expectations and qualifications for their leadership, and make sure you’re all on the same page. If you’re on a different page, you really shouldn’t join or lead ’em. (But if their qualifications defy the bible, i.e. they’re racist, or you gotta pay membership fees: Cult.)

Alfons’s church isn’t a cult. He’ll totally let you attend his church even when you disagree with him. He will debate you, though; he lacks maturity. He thinks he’ll win you over with clever arguments. He doesn’t let up though. So what really happens in his church, is when the people of his church disagree with him, they hide it. They never let it get back to him. And kinda mock him in private for some of the dumber stuff in his newsletter.

It may not be a cult, but it’s definitely a breeding ground for hypocrites.

Secular debates.

While quite a lot of Americans aren’t control freaks when it comes to religious opinions, quite a lot of us absolutely are when it comes to other opinions. Might be about favorite teams, brand names, or music. Definitely true of politics.

I’ve heard Christians claim this is because these other things—sports, possessions, politics—are the control freaks’ idols. They’re what people really worship; if only they were as zealous about Jesus! Thing is, overzealousness of any sort—even in the defense of Jesus—is fleshly. Paul specifically listed hostility, strife, partisanship, and division. Ga 5.20 Standing up for Jesus with such behavior is wholly inappropriate, and we’d better not see any such behavior among Christians. But when it comes to secular interests, it stands to reason we’ll see a lot of fleshly behavior.

Unfortunately, we bring a lot of these behaviors into the church with us. I regularly, regularly, hear Christians trash-talk one another’s baseball and football teams. They claim they’re doing it in jest, as friendly rivalry, but I’ve seen it cross a line here and there.

I’ve watched Christians debate, sometimes angrily, politics. Or preferences: Which computer is better, which truck is better, which restaurant is better, which phone is better, which Christian worship band is better. Come election years, some Christians straight-up stop talking to one another. I have Christians friends who refuse to be my social-media “friends” because they can’t abide my politics.

And Christians can be just as dogmatic about these secular things. Alfons is convinced you can’t be a legitimate Christian if you don’t support the president like he does. And he jokes he’s not so sure about you if you’re not a Dallas Cowboys fan… but considering his devotion to the team, y’gotta wonder whether he truly is joking.

It’s downright uncomfortable when you’re in a church where everybody, leaders included, loudly praise people you think are awful human beings. People switch churches over this sort of thing. Not that any partisan church is a good thing; the only kingdom a church should ever support is God’s. Anything else is treason to King Jesus. When he returns he’s gonna overthrow those other kingdoms, y’know.

But even well-meaning Christians slip up and treat their idols as if they’re mandatory expectations for fellow Christians. And if anyone says otherwise (or dares rebuke ’em for the obvious idolatry), they’re not welcome in church any longer. ’Cause teams, bands, parties, candidates, and affiliations are among their dogmas.

Freedom in Christ.

Christianity does have certain fixed beliefs. I’m not saying we don’t! I’m not saying Christians are totally free to believe whatever we please, yet still call ourselves Christian. If we’re not Christ-followers we’re not Christian; if we don’t make any effort to reform our thinking so we think like he does, bear fruit like he does, and walk like he does, 1Jn 2.6 it doesn’t matter how we brand ourselves.

And churches are right to encourage Christians to follow Jesus. Absolutely right to go digging through the bible, find out what Jesus teaches, find out what Jesus expects, and hold the attendees (and especially members and leaders) accountable to that. That’s kinda why the church exists! We help one another follow Jesus better.

But does it help when we police one another?

Only to a point. Fr’instance children and newbies: They don’t always know what’s appropriate. I had a newbie friend who swore a lot. I had to remind him more than once: His colorful metaphors were freaking out certain Christians who lack the grace to forgive such behavior. “You gotta watch out for weaker Christians,” I reminded him. “You and I can hear such things and think nothing of ’em, but it’s horrifying them.” Ro 14.13

But I never threatened to penalize him for swearing: That’s not for me to do! He’s gotta learn to govern himself. We all do. Fining him for swearing, or threatening he might lose his salvation over swearing, is cult territory. At most, I can ask him to leave a group till he gets control of himself. That’s it.

In leadership, we always gotta consider grace. The goal is never to punish the wicked and kick people out; it’s repentance and restoration. What’ll get ’em to follow Jesus better, and get back into our group? That should be our only consideration.

And yeah, we also have to give grace to those weaker Christians—the snowflakes who insist we can only share their teams, their politics, their dogmas; that “no good Christian” would wear makeup, drink beer, watch R-rated movies, play cards, listen to rap, or other Christianist taboos.

If Christians can’t practice grace, they’re wholly unsuitable for Christian leadership. Christ is nothing but gracious, and his church should be so too. If your church is led by graceless Christians, who pick apart every stray word which comes out of your mouth, I don’t blame you for not wanting to go to that church. I don’t wanna go there either.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Altar calls: Come on down!

ALTAR 'ɔl.tər noun. A table or block used as the focus for a religious ritual, particularly offerings or ritual sacrifices to a deity.

2. In Christianity, the table used to hold the elements for holy communion.

3. In some churches, the stage, the steps to the stage, or the space in front of the stage, where people go as a sign of commitment.

During our worship services, sometimes Christians are invited to leave our seats and come forward to the stage. It’s called an altar call.

Thing is, we’re not sure how the term originated. ’Cause the stage, or the front of the stage, wasn’t called an altar back then. The altar was the communion table. My guess is people were originally instructed to gather by the communion table. In a lot of churches, that altar is front and center; in the church I went to as a child, it was right in front of the preacher’s podium.

But when evangelists held rallies, whether at a concert hall, sports arena, outdoor stadium, theater, high school gym, or grade school cafeteria, or any venue where there is no communion table, they’d say “Come to the altar” anyway. Force of habit, I guess. So people came forward… and assumed something around there was the altar. The stage, perhaps.

You realize when we don’t clearly define things for the people of our churches, people just guess. And guess wrong. It’s why so many Christians don’t know what a soul is. Hence many new Christians have guessed the stage is the altar, so the word has evolved to mean a stage too. As if the people on stage are our ritual sacrifice to God. (Considering how some of them mangle the scriptures, some butchering is apparently still part of our services. But I’ll stop the ranting there.)

Anyway, altar calls used to generally be for people who wished to become Christian. The evangelist would invite ’em forward, and a pastor or elder would lead ’em in the sinner’s prayer. In many churches this is still true; it’s the only reason they have altar calls. “Come lay down your life at the altar,” is the idea: Submit to God, accept his salvation, let Jesus be your Lord, and let him make your life more abundant.

The altar call began as a dramatic way for people to visibly demonstrate they repented and were turning to God. They didn’t do altar calls in the bible though. John the baptist and the first Christians preferred baptism. But nowadays, churches expect you to go through some sort of baptism class first, so the altar call became an acceptable Evangelical substitute: Wanna give your life to Jesus? Come forward. One of our prayer team will pray with you.

Not every church does it, of course. In really large churches it’s not practical to move masses of people to the front of the auditorium. Some churches don’t approve of the public display. Show-offs will act like they’re publicly repenting, and really they’re just trying to get attention. Certain emotionally unstable people will come forward to every altar call, and go through the whole ritual time and again: They’ll repent, they’ll get prayed over, they’ll have a nice cathartic cry… and they’ll come back next week and do it all over again. Do they ever actually repent? Maybe. But really they’re there for the emotional release.

So if they don’t do altar calls, they do something like it: “If you haven’t yet received Jesus, meet us in the fellowship hall after the service,” or “Come talk to me about it later.” It’s a lot less emotional… which they prefer, ’cause it means people put some thought into turning to Jesus, instead of letting their emotions sway them. Speaking for myself, I don’t care whether it’s an emotional or thoughtful response; either can take. Likewise people can rethink, then turn their back on, either response. The important thing is we have some venue where people can turn to Jesus.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Take notes.

It’s Wednesday. So, assuming you went to church Sunday morning… do you remember what the sermon or homily was about?

Some of you do, ’cause your memory is just that good. (Mine is.) You were paying attention. The preacher said something memorable, or entertaining, or particularly profound. Or perfectly relevant to your situation, or taught you something you’d like to try.

Others of you can’t remember for the life of you.

Nope, this isn’t a criticism. Hey, some people who stand up to preach simply aren’t preachers. They might be nice people, good musicians, great prayer leaders; they’re friendly people, and exactly the sort of person you want in your life when you’re going through tough times. Or they might have a lot of personal charisma—they’re people you naturally like, even though they might not have done anything to win people’s affection. (Some of them, like certain celebrities and politicians, might’ve done plenty to make you dislike them—but when you see ’em in person, all they gotta do is smile at you, and you’ll forgive them everything, ’cause they’re just that kind of person. That’s how they get away with so much evil.) But for whatever reason, Sunday mornings they’re the ones on the dais, at the podium, talking at you. And they use a lot of words… yet say very little worth remembering.

Some preachers are confusing. Instead of three points, they preach 20. Or every time they touch upon a good idea, they go off on a tangent, and never return to the initial idea. Or they speak nothing but Christianese and platitudes. Or they speak nothing but elementary, new-believer stuff—the stuff you know already, so why bother to listen?

Then there are the distractions in the service. There’s a hole in your sock, you can feel it, and it’s bugging you. There’s an argument on Twitter you had to pause for the service, but you so wanna dive back into it. There’s a guy behind you who smells like he’s taken holy communion about 20 times before the service. There’s a woman in front of you whose hat is blocking your view; who’s wearing a ton of perfume to cover up the fact she hasn’t drycleaned this particular set of Sunday clothes in a few months… but you can smell the stank anyway. There’s a crying baby. The kids are fidgeting. Isn’t there a game going on?… What’s the score?

Or you’re just tired. Or your mind is otherwise elsewhere. Or any of the personal reasons why you weren’t able to follow the message as well as you wish. Life happens.

But it’s important to remember what’s been preached at your church. For more reasons than these:

• It helps you grow closer as a church body: You’re on the same page, topically. You have a common goal, a common subject to analyze further.
• The preacher is likely discussing an issue many of you do need help with. Elementary or not, maybe you need to look at it again, or in depth.
• Likely the Holy Spirit wants this subject preached upon, because you’re gonna need this information in the near future. Like, say, this Wednesday.

So if you’re struggling to remember the sermons, notetaking can help.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

“Church is SO BORING.”

So it’s summer vacation, your kid wanders into the room, and complains, “I’m bored.”

And if you’re anything like my parents, you’d throw up your hands in frustration: “Whatd’you mean, you’re bored? You got a room full of toys! A computer full of video games! A shelf full of books! How can you be bored?… You’re so spoiled rotten.”

Okay, maybe you’re not middle class and can’t afford to give your kids any that stuff. Or maybe you’re like my dad and responds, “Bored, eh? Well I have some projects you could work on…” by which he meant chores, none of which were fun. But both kids and adults in our culture, on every economic level, have no shortage of options. “Spoiled rotten” is right. Boredom just means we don’t care about any of these options; at the moment we don’t care about, or can’t relate to, any of ’em. A “bored” kid with a roomful of toys simply isn’t interested in any of them right now. (Quick ’n dirty way to change that: Offer to get rid of any of them.)

And sometimes we Christians are the very same way with our churches.

• The songs? Heard ’em a thousand times. And I’m not just talking about how the worship pastor loves to repeat them: They’re on the radio; they come up all the time on Spotify; we own the CDs; we grew annoyed with ’em months ago.
• The sermons? Heard those lessons a thousand times. Heard ’em in children’s church when we grew up. Heard ’em again in youth groups, young-adult classes, on church TV shows and from radio preachers; in Sunday sermon after Wednesday night sermon after Saturday night sermon.
• The people? Same old people. There’s nothing new in their lives… or at least nothing new we care about. They only talk small talk, or they only complain, or they won’t stop bragging about their kids, or they only bring up sports and weather. Or worse—the opposite of your politics.

Eventually we Christians all reach a saturation point with our churches: We’ve heard it all. Seen it all. Done it all. And we’re bored.

So we don’t wanna go.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

The Holy Spirit’s temple: Multiple Christians.

From time to time Christians talk about how you, singular, individually, are the temple of the Holy Spirit.

’Cause the Spirit is sealed to every individual Christian. Ep 1.13 He lives in the heart of every single believer. And whatever God lives in is, properly, his temple. If he lives in you, it makes you his temple. If he lives in another Christian, it makes that person a temple. Dozens of Christians are dozens of temples. Billions of Christians are billions of temples. Get it?

But it’s not accurate. God has one temple.

As was kinda emphasized in the bible. Moses built the portable temple at Sinai, which English-speaking Christians call the tabernacle, and that was the temple for 4 centuries till Solomon ben David built a permanent one of gold-plated cedar in Jerusalem. The Babylonians burnt that down; Zerubbabel ben Shealtiel built another of stone; Herod 1 and his successors renovated it; the Romans eventually destroyed it. It was the one and only place the LORD intended to meet people for worship and sacrifice; it was the one and only place they kept his ark, representing his relationship with Israel. It was the one and only his name dwelt Dt 12.11 —which was the LORD’s way of putting it, ’cause obviously the Almighty can’t be contained by a mere building.

But the Jerusalem temple wasn’t the only temple of the LORD on earth. Jeroboam ben Nabat, king of Samaria, feared losing subjects to the king of Jerusalem, so he built two more temples. They didn’t have arks, but Jeroboam put gold calf idols in them, figuring that’d do; and since there’s a whole command against idolatry in the Ten Commandments, God and his prophets condemned Jeroboam’s temples ever after. After the Jerusalem temple was destroyed, Egyptian Jews in exile constructed a temple to the LORD in Alexandria, and Samaritans constructed a temple to the LORD at Mt. Gerazim. But neither of these temples were commanded nor authorized by God. He had his own plans. Always had.

And once his temple’s veil ripped open, Mt 27.51 it signifies God wasn’t interested in being worshiped from Herod’s stone building any longer. He was gonna build a temple from entirely different stones: Living people. Christians. Every Christian.

I’m not the Spirit’s temple; I’m one of the stones of its temple.

As are you. As is every Christian. We’re parts of his temple. Because the temple us us—collectively. The Spirit doesn’t have billions of temples; he only has the one. Same as always.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Churches, “the Church,” and God’s kingdom.

Whenever people say church they either mean a building where religious activity happens, or the hierarchy which runs the religion.

Which is way different than what I mean by it. Or what Jesus and the bible mean by it. When Jesus says ἐκκλησία/ekklisía he means a flock of Christians; a group, assembly, crowd, congregation, collection, bunch, congress, whatever term you wanna use for many of us. People like to take apart that Greek word, and note its word-root is καλέω/kaléo, “to call”—and then analyze the significance of Jesus calling Christians to meet together. Yeah, whatever: By the time people used the word in Jesus’s day, it just meant a gathering. And that’s still what it means.

Still, even Christians tend to use it to mean a church building, or the church leadership. Which is why we tend to forget we are the church. Church isn’t a separate thing from us; it is us. It’s us collectively; it’s why I can’t say “I am the church,” because I all by myself am definitely not the church: Other Christians have to be in it. At least two or three. Mt 18.20 The more the better.

Typically “church” refers to a local group. But sometimes we use the word to refer to every Christian, everywhere: The universal church. The catholic church (as opposed to the Roman Catholic Church, which is only one church within the universal church, although frequently they forget this). Every human who has a connection with Christ Jesus and is part of his body. It’s hardly limited to one sect or denomination; Orthodox Christians are not the only Christians on the planet. Neither are Lutherans, Episcopalians, Baptists, Calvinists, charismatics, Fundamentalists, Emergent Christians, nor Purpose-Driven™ Christians. (Though sometimes we certainly act like it.) We aren’t saved by our affiliations or theology; we’re saved by God through Christ Jesus, and we’re in his kingdom because God adopted us and recognizes a valid, living relationship with us.

Of course, since many Christians are under the delusion we determine who’s a “real Christian” and who isn’t, we tend to limit the universal church to our definitions. If we’re pretty sure real Christians only vote the way we do, every Christian in the opposition party isn’t a real Christian, so they don‘t count as part of Jesus’s universal church. If we’ve got certain doctrines we feel every real Christian holds to, we figure everyone who believes otherwise is heretic, and by definition heretics can’t be in the true church. And so forth. Various Christians like to refer to the visible church, the 2 billion people worldwide who publicly claim allegiance to Jesus, and the invisible church, the unknown number of people whom Jesus really recognizes as his. Depending on how optimistic or pessimistic they are, either the visible church is way bigger than the invisible, or vice-versa.

Meh. I’ve no idea how many people Jesus actually intends to let into his kingdom. I’m an optimist, so I figure God’s way more gracious than we are, and is gonna save way more people than we expect. Not everybody; not that he doesn’t want to; he warned us there are gonna be holdouts. But he doesn’t limit his kingdom like we do. So I expect there’s significant overlap between the visible and invisible churches; and when I say “kingdom” I typically mean his invisible church, which is represented by the 2 billion professing Christians.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Where your church meets, and where the needy are.

My church (I’m not a pastor; just a longtime member) meets in a strip mall. We’re next to a Walmart Neighborhood Market. We moved in during the recession, before Walmart moved in and the building owners drove up the rental prices. The higher rent was part of the reason we had to give up our Fellowship Hall; there’s a carpet store there now. It’s next to a junior high school, next to a 7-Eleven, across the street from a health club. It’s not a good neighborhood. We got crime. We got homeless people. Which means it’s a really good place to put a church. Needy people and sinners need Jesus!

So occasionally homeless folks come into the building. Usually it’s because we have coffee in the hall. They see free coffee; they want free coffee; I don‘t blame ’em. Come in and have some coffee! Sometimes we also have pastries, doughnuts, muffins, or other baked goods; they’ll eat those too. The hope is they’ll also stick around for the worship service. And every once in a while they do.

We had the same situation at one of my previous churches. (Still wasn’t a pastor; just a board member.) We met in the city’s community center. The building used to be a Lutheran church, so it was a really suitable place for a church to meet. Because it was centrally located, and pretty close to a bus line, sometimes transients would wander in to use the bathroom. And they’d notice we had a table with coffee and bagels and pastries on it.

THEY. “Is this for anyone?”

ME. “Yes. Help yourself.”

THEY. “Thank you!”

ME. “You’re welcome to stick around for the service too, if you want.”

THEY. [some excuse to get out of that]

ME. [shrug; well I tried]

But every so often one of the church ladies would come to me, scandalized: “There’s a homeless person over there. Eating our pastries. What should we do?”

“Invite ’em to the service,” I said. Duh.

But you know how suburban Americans are: We want our churches to accommodate us, not the needy.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Christian leadership and age discrimination.

If your church lacks young people in leadership, it’s gonna lose all its young people. Just you wait.

Arguably Timothy of Lystra first met Paul of Tarsus when he was a teenager; old enough to come along with the apostles on their travels, but young enough for Paul to think of him as a son. Pp 2.22 When Timothy became the leader of a church in Ephesus in the 60s of the Christian era, Paul would’ve been in his 50s and Timothy in his 30s—certainly old enough to lead, but certainly not the oldest guy in that church. Quite possibly not even the one who’d been Christian longest, since Paul had evangelized Ephesus years before he ever met up with Timothy.

In any case being in your thirties meant it was necessary for Paul to make this comment in his first letter to Timothy:

1 Timothy 4.12 KWL

Nobody gets to look down upon your youth!

Instead become the faithful Christians’ example in word, lifestyle, love, faith, and purity.

Because people will look down on your youth.

I know from experience. When I was in my thirties, I was asked to run the church’s preservice bible study. Our head pastor felt I was up to it. Others not so much, ’cause they wanted to run it. Yep, all the participants were older than me. But I had three advantages over them:

1. I became a Christian in my childhood. The rest became Christians as adults. So set our physical ages aside: I’d been Christian about 10 years longer than most. There was only one fella who’d become Christian in 1975, same as me. Of course you can be spiritually mature at any age… but when you get so worked up over something as minor as the youngster leading the bible study, y’ain’t showing any such maturity.
2. Trust me: When you’re leading a bible study, it helps when you can actually do bible study. I’d been to seminary, so I knew how. The others knew how to do bad word studies, and quote popular Christian authors. For all the good that does.
3. Our pastor did after all ask me to lead the group.

Admittedly, I didn’t let their hangup bother me any. I figured if it bothered them badly enough, they’d quit the group. They didn’t, and stuck with me for a year and a half. So no, don’t get the idea I was wringing my hands over their disapproval, and constantly meditating upon 1 Timothy 4.12 to keep my spirits up. My spirits were fine. Studying to prepare the lessons was teaching me all sorts of useful stuff. Hopefully teaching them this stuff too.

But as Paul stated elsewhere in his pastoral letters, the main qualification for Christian leadership is good character. They gotta be trustworthy people. Hence his advice to Timothy: Become an example in word, lifestyle, love, faith, and purity. Be a solid Christian. Be of good character. If you’ve got that, age won’t matter to anybody but people who lack good character.

Yeah, I know. Lots of Christians lack good character. That’s why young people aren’t often put in charge of things. Either they themselves lack character, or they have plenty but the other leaders don’t.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Deacons: Those who serve the church.

As described in the scriptures, the church’s workers—whether we give ’em the title or not.

DEACON /'di.kən/ n. Minister. Might be the leader of a particular ministry, but not the leader of a church: Deacons are nearly always subordinate to the pastor or priest.

[Diaconal /di'ak.(ə.)nəl/ adj., less properly deaconal /di'kən.əl/ adj.]

The word diákonos/“deacon” originally meant “runner,” like someone who runs errands. You know, someone we’d nowadays call a gofer—as in “go fer coffee,” or run any other errands. Deacon first shows up in the bible when Jesus said if we wanna become great, we need to be everyone’s servant. Mk 10.43 Or when he said if anyone serves him, the Father values them. Jn 12.26

Deacon is used to describe the folks appointed to run the early church’s food ministry. Ac 6.1-6 The Twelve didn’t give them any more responsibility than that. But they picked mature Christians, and as a result people recognized these servants as leaders in their own right. Stephen and Philip did some very notable things in Acts.

A deacon means any minister in your church who’s officially or formally in charge of something. Not the volunteers who pitch in from time to time, who run one fundraiser, taught one Sunday school class once, or pitched in on the church’s work day. Deacons are actually in charge of stuff and people. They run the small groups. Lead the evangelism team. Lead the prayer team. Greet visitors weekly. Serve as ushers during the services. Handle the bookkeeping. Clean the building. Answer phones. Teach the classes. Run the kitchen. Preach sermons. Lead the singing. Run the website. Anything and everything: Deacons have duties.

True, many churches have made “deacon” an official title—and the only “deacons” are on the church’s board of directors. Yeah, board members do fit the scriptures’ definition of deacons. But in the scriptures, deacon is hardly limited to board members. Nor is it interchangeable with elders, even though deacons had better be mature Christians. Elders aren’t necessarily put in charge of things. Deacons are.

Read the whole thing! ➡️

Liturgy: A formula for worship.

LITURGY 'lɪd.ər.dʒi noun. Detailed order of service for (Christian) worship.

2. [capitalized] The eucharistic service in an Orthodox church.

[Liturgical lə'tər.dʒə.kəl adjective, liturgist 'lɪd.ər.dʒəst noun.]

Some churches—namely the older ones—are liturgical: They have a very particular order of service, and all the churches do it the same way. Go to nearly any Catholic church anywhere on the planet, and you’ll instantly find it familiar, because all of them use the very same prayer book, the Roman Missal. True, it’s been translated into all the local languages, but whether the service is in English, Spanish, French, Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, or Italian, it’ll be the very same order. Same bible readings. Same prayers. Same songs. Same everything. Everywhere.

Some Christians are bothered by this level of conformity. They don’t get it: The point isn’t conformity, but unity. All these Christians are worshiping God together, as one massive body of Christ, and that’s why they’re all saying the same things and praying the same prayers. When you’re off by yourself, having left the worship service, you’re entirely free to worship God as an individual: Sing what you like, pray what you pray, on your own. But once you’re together, you really are together. You, and every other Catholic on the planet. (Or every other Orthodox, or every other Anglican, or every other Lutheran.) It’s a powerful idea.

And it’s a comforting idea. For some Christians, churches which don’t do this are way too undisciplined.

Sure, the nonliturgical churches have a bit of a liturgy: Nearly every church follows an order of service of some kind, whether they print it in their bulletins or not. At my church, it’s three songs, announcements, offering, greeting one another, sermon, altar call, dismissal. But y’know, another church in my denomination might follow a whole other order. And sing different songs. Certainly pray different prayers. One congregation worships together, but not together on the level of a church where every congregation syncs up like Catholics.

But liturgical Christians feel there’s a little too much freedom in such churches. The music may not be theological enough for them. The extemporaneous prayers don’t do as good a job as rote prayers in teaching Christians how to pray. The preacher’s freedom to discuss any bible passage, means there’s a whole lot of bible which is never touched. (Fr’instance, when’s the last time you heard a message about one of the minor prophets?—and quoting one of their Messanic prophecies doesn’t count.)

Hence liturgical Christians prefer liturgical churches. There, they feel they’re particularly worshiping God together—with other Christians round the world, with other Christians throughout history, and growing with them rather than growing on our own.

Read the whole thing! ➡️